In search of lost time

"Newborn star" ... Jamie Gulpilil in Ten Canoes. His father,
David, narrates the film in English.

During filming, crocodile-spotters with guns watched from the
trees. Below, the crew were often waist-deep in a swamp, set upon
by leeches in the water and mozzies in the air. And none of the
actors - some of whom hardly spoke English - had been in a film
before.

That was part of what director Rolf de Heer calls the "great,
glorious and difficult adventure" of making Ten Canoes,
the first Australian feature shot entirely in an indigenous
language. The comic drama about tribal Aborigines, set partly 1000
years ago and partly even further back in history, screened at the
Cannes Film Festival last night and opens at the Sydney equivalent
next month.

The story gives an idea of just how different Ten
Canoes is from any other Australian film. It centres on a man
who takes his young brother on a magpie goose-egg hunt after
learning he fancies one of the elder brother's three wives. After
building canoes and heading into the swamp, the elder brother tells
a story about how an identical love triangle was resolved in the
mythical past.

Strikingly shot, the film jumps between the black and white
scenes of 1000 years ago and the colour of mythical times.

Legendary Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, whose long career has
included Walkabout, Crocodile Dundee and Rabbit-Proof
Fence, narrates the film in English. His 22-year-old son,
Jamie, is part of a cast that includes a local artist and
ceremonial leader (Peter Minygululu), an arts co-operative
treasurer (Richard Birrinbirrin), a sculptor (Crusoe Kurrdal), a
painter (Philip Gudthaykudthay, who revels in the nickname
Pussycat) and a shop worker who had always wanted to act (Frances
Djulibing). There are no white faces on screen.

Ten Canoes was shot in the Arafura Swamp in Arnhem
Land, a place that redefines the word remote. "There's a plane to
Darwin," de Heer says. "Then there's a plane to Maningrida. Then
there's usually a plane to Milingimbi. Then there's a plane to
Ramingining. Then you've got to drive."

The adventure began when Gulpilil invited de Heer, the filmmaker
behind Bad Boy Bubby and Alexandra's Project, to
visit his traditional lands around Ramingining before they started
work together on The Tracker in 2003.

"It was the most foreign country that I've ever been to," de
Heer recalls. "I've been to many countries in the world and I was
more culturally adrift and had less cultural connection than
anywhere I've ever been. And here it was in our own backyard. It
was just astonishing.

"The cosmology of the people up there is profoundly different
from our cosmology - what the world is, how language functions,
what's real and what's not real, what's important and not
important, the way things are classified or not classified, which
is much more the case. It was a parallel universe."

Gulpilil suggested making a film - any film - in Ramingining, a
town of about 800 people comprising 15 or 16 Aboriginal clans and
eight language groups.

The story was inspired by a black-and-white photograph taken by
the anthropologist Dr Donald Thomson in the 1930s, and shown to de
Heer by Gulpilil. It depicted 10 men in bark canoes on the swamp.
In Ramingining, the locals see similar photos as a record of their
history - they call it "Thomson time".

During the two years de Heer spent devising the story with the
community, he says his most important decision was to not impose
his vision on their story. This became tricky when the community
wanted to include the goose-egg hunt depicted in another Thomson
photo.

"That's about as undramatic as you can get," says de Heer, who
solved the problem using parallel stories. But he had serious
doubts that it would turn into a film. "After I started and I began
to realise the enormity of the commitment, I wanted to get out. I
wanted to stop," he admits. "It's really only the people very close
to me - my daughters and [partner] Molly - saying 'you've got to do
it'."

Gulpilil had agreed to co-direct and play two roles but withdrew
a month before filming after falling out with the community for
what are described as complex reasons. It wasn't until the world
premiere at the Adelaide Festival in March that there seemed to be
a reconciliation when he appeared with the community on stage.

De Heer recast the roles and Peter Djigirr, a local expert in
catching crocodiles and finding their eggs, became co-director.

As a film, Ten Canoes is unusual for not dealing with black and
white history. What the community wanted was something that
preserved their culture and language. "The [community] as a whole
has low self-esteem because they've been told for a hundred years
by white people that [their culture is] useless and pointless and
primitive and all that sort of stuff," de Heer says. "It's
important for them to have their culture validated."

The scale of the cultural issues tackled during filmmaking was
evident when 17 cast members travelled to Adelaide for the
premiere. Many found meeting the media an awkward experience,
either because of shyness, lack of English or the unfamiliar
directness of face-to-face discussions requiring immediate
responses.

This reporter, for example, spent several unsuccessful minutes
asking how 71-year-old Pussycat felt about the film and his role as
the Sorcerer. "Did I tell you he doesn't speak English?" the
publicist asked later.

Another issue for the filmmakers was that not everyone
understood the concept of acting out a fictional story, even though
many in Ramingining watch television avidly. "They like to watch it
- very much so - but there's an incomplete understanding of what it
is that they're watching," de Heer says. "A cop show set in New
York is just as likely to be thought to be happening in real time
as looking out the window. As far as I can tell, the notion of
fiction in their culture - and language - is either not the same as
ours or doesn't exist."

Another issue was a different notion of time and work. When one
shot required eight of the cast, only five turned up. So de Heer
built alternatives into his filming schedule and waited until all
eight were present to shoot the scene.

"We had to work to their expectations," cinematographer Ian
Jones says. "We put ourselves in their hands - in indigenous hands
- and they came through. Getting to know them all as individuals
was really something special."

But, from day one, it was never easy. "The first day of
shooting, technically we had 10 canoists," Jones says. "Within
about half an hour of being on location, we had only nine. [One]
went to the toilet and never came back ... If someone rings me up
and says I've got this job, I drop everything and go and do the
job. In their world, we probably observe and say 'they're not doing
a lot today, we'll probably be able to grab them', but we can't.
There's a complex undercurrent of business going on, whether that's
a ceremony or whether it has to do with the way they look after
each other."

De Heer was cheered by the community's response during filming.
"Every time we'd watch rushes, they'd scream with delight and just
be loving it and be moved and be crying. You just knew you had to
keep going."

"It was really great," Birrinbirrin said after a standing
ovation for Ten Canoes at Adelaide. "'I'm proud of being in the
movie and I'm proud for the movie we made. It was good fun, a lot
of exercise, a lot of jokes. I had a big tummy but not now."

He describes the Thomson photos as important records for the
community. "We didn't know how our ancestors looked and how they
used to live. They used to live [with] no sugar, no tea leaves
before. Only wild honey and water from the river. Our children can
grow up and show that film. They can see us."

The loquacious David Gulpilil ("I can sit down with journalists
all day and talk like a kookaburra") says he cried when he first
watched what he calls a "true Australian story, fair dinkum".

"It's a story that's never been told, never been recorded ...
It's how our ancestors lived, truly."

There's also a family link with the past - the Thomson photo of
10 canoeists features Gulpilil's father and grandfather, and the
film includes his son, whom he describes as "a newborn star".

"I'm proud that he follows the footsteps of mine," Gulpilil
says. "He's been watching me on movies and TV and I'm very glad ...
He'd like to do more films. When I'm retired, my son can take
over."